India finally managed to win a one day match in India on 23rd January, this was the last match of the one day series between Australia and India. The match was held in Sydney and the pitch was same as other matches, it was a flat track, batsmen's delight, bowler's nightmare. Australia batted first, lost an early wicket when the ball was swinging a bit, but then its scoring rate went up to around 6 runs an over.
Jaspreet Bhumrah playing his first ODI bowled beautifully and showed others how to ball on these tracks. He picked up the wicket of Steve Smith. Australia lost wickets in quick succession, however when Mitchell Marsh came to bat, the played probably the best innings of his one day career till now. Marsh got a century and Australia again managed to get a huge score of 330 runs in stipulated 50 overs.
India started steadily and the first wicket partnership scored 123 runs till the wicket Dhawan fell. Virat did not last long and he went early when India's score was at 134. However Manish Pandey played a wonderful innings giving excellent support to Rohit Sharma. Unfortunately Rohit was not able to get the 3rd century of this series. He was out at 99.
Dhoni came in when the score was at 231. Dhoni is not in a great batting form and it showed in the way he batted. He struggled to get runs pushing up the asking rate. The pressure to score runs on Manish increased but he was up to the task. It came to a point when India needed around 36 runs of 18 balls. However in the next two overs Indians were able to get 23 runs, in the last over 13runs were needed, the over was bowled by Mitch Marsh. The first ball was a wide. Dhoni finally managed to hit a six in the next ball. He tried a similar shot in the second ball however he was caught out.
Manish Pandey was now on strike. Manish hit the ball for a boundary and that brought his century as well. Now India needed 2 runs of 3 balls. The field was in. So Manish hit the ball in the air towards the direction of long off. The batsmen ran two runs and India won the match.
India had an even better chance of winning the fourth ODI had they played the way they did in the 5th ODI. A question rises about the pitches on which these one dayers were played. This are not the typical Australian wickets of the past that offered assistance to bowlers. This pitches had no help for the bowlers and the Team that batted second had the best chance of winning the match.
One hopes that India plays better in the T20 series scheduled to begin from 26th January.
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